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We must not accept our leaders' illegal occupation of a sovereign state

Richard OverySaturday March 20, 2004

Imagine, for a moment, the following scenario. American and British troops battle their way into Iraqi territory, sprayed with anthrax shells and gas bombs. In Cyprus and Tel Aviv, rockets explode, loaded with biological agents. After a bitter struggle, coalition forces seize control of the country. They find concealed rocket silos with missiles primed for attacks on distant European targets; plans are found for rocket attacks on London. At other sites they find an advanced nuclear bomb project and barrels full of chemical weapons. They flush out an al-Qaida stronghold where they find the battle plan of world terrorism. Saddam and Bin Laden were, after all, in cahoots.

A year ago this was the fanciful vision that pushed Blair to side with Bush and go to war in Iraq. They braced their troops and populations for the worst, and the more gullible believed them (I talked to Londoners planning their evacuation route from the capital). The rest of us saw the arguments for the claptrap they were. The reality from March 20 last year to March 20 this year has been grotesquely different. Two of the world's most sophisticated armed forces brushed aside a tinpot army of soldiers without boots, smashed Iraq's cities to pieces, killed thousands of civilians and captured Iraq's oil more or less intact. There were, as any intelligent observer could have told them, no WMD, no centre of world terrorism, no aggressive intent.

In the past 12 months, deserters from the Bush/Blair cause have revealed piecemeal the reality. War was planned long in advance against a soft Arab target that nobody much liked. The intelligence services knew that they were being asked to endorse fairy tales. The attorney general has come clean on how he was forced to turn an illegal war into a lawful war of defence against the Iraqi threat. The duplicity was systematic, and remains so. Blair has no regrets. He bays defiant nonsense about the terrible menace that has been removed, and the greater terrorist menace still at large. Not once has he expressed regret for what a dozen years of sanctions and war inflicted on the Iraqi people. Enough that his cause is just.

There is no pleasure in saying, a year on, that we told you so. Invasion invited worldwide hostility, divided (and still divides) Europe, weakened the UN and, above all, provoked precisely the confrontation with terror that the war was supposed to alleviate. I have been told to stop carping and let the British and Americans get on with the job of ruling Iraq now they are there. But this is tantamount to endorsing the war. Why are the US and Britain there, in illegal occupation of a sovereign state? Why should we accept this reality and knuckle down to Blair's call to arms? Today's demonstration is a reminder that what was a war of unprovoked aggression a year ago has not been changed by victory.

I have had many arguments, too, about the vexed question of oil. The view that oil is some kind of Marxist red herring is widespread. But in this case there can be no other conclusion. Oil installations and oil lines were captured and guarded first; the oil ministry was protected while priceless art treasures were being ransacked. The second largest oil reserves are now safe once again for the wider world market and the global oil companies. Popular ignorance about the nature of oil politics has played into coalition hands, just as popular indifference to the use of major US companies in rebuilding what the US armed forces knocked down has deflected debate from issues that should shock international opinion.

"Terror" is not an organisation or a single force. It is related to a variety of political confrontations, each of which has to be understood in its own terms. "Terror" cannot be fought as if it were a war against a hidden, global and undifferentiated enemy. The threat, such as it is, has been exacerbated by the arrogant display of naked power shown by the US, Britain and its motley coalition. But the real changes to "our way of life" are the consequence of the panicky western response to terrorism, which has eroded civil liberties and the rule of law and threatens to smother us with a security net that will undermine the so-called "democratic" values that the west is pledged to preserve. This is an unnecessary price to pay, but we will all see the surveillance state grow unless democratic non-compliance reasserts itself.

Today we could confront terrorism differently. It is a profound irony that Blair has helped to defuse the Ulster crisis and reduce terrorism by the very means that he has abandoned in his crusading zeal against the world enemy. Terrorists do not blow people up just because they are nihilistic thugs. Terrorism is born of fear, resentment and powerlessness in the face of the massive power and cultural expansion of the west; it is about real issues for those who perpetrate its acts of violence. Palestinians die because they want to free Palestine. Understanding those issues on their own terms and adjusting our politics in order to do so does not mean that we endorse violence.

Last year Blair told the British people: "Let history be my judge." The history of the past year has been damning, but there is an opportunity for the people to judge as well. The same message that the Spanish people sent to Jos? Aznar can also be sent to Bush and Blair. It will not solve the world's problems, but it might make the world a safer place.

? Richard Overy is professor of modern history at King's College London, and author of The Dictators, to be published by Penguin in June

I think it's patently obvious what the problem is. The jew controlled media is supporting the mysgenation that is leading to the destruction of the white race. Sumner Redstone and his cronies are manipulating the media to further the goals of Israel and other Elders of Zion. The White Race are gods true "chosen peoplE", the hook-nosers are stealing ou rbirth right!